


The Cowardly Lion

by nota7



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Just sticking to the people of Chorus for this, Where are the Blood Gulch Crew?, i dunno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 02:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7666009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nota7/pseuds/nota7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn't the leader the Federal Army wanted. </p><p>He wasn't the tyrant Vanessa Kimball expected. </p><p>A year to the day General Donald Doyle gave his life for Chorus, Katie Jensen talks to the men and women his sacrifice saved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cowardly Lion

**Author's Note:**

> So, this used to be a multi-chapter fic that I never finished, but I decided to just edit it into a one-shot when I finished it, for Doyle Remembrance Week.

__

**New Armonia, 11 months and 23 days post war.**

 

"Oh, for the love of- _Captain Bitters_! Would you please just sit down for _five_ seconds and stop avoiding me?!"

The armoury was empty at this hour, the only people who'd stick around so late were only there if they had to be. Or, if one of them FELT they had to be. Not for their own good, but for the people of Chorus!

This person was not a soldier though.

Well. Not anymore.

"Jensen, I'm not talking about this! Drop it! And put that mic away!" Bitters gestured sharply at the overly large relic of a microphone that could only have come from the planet's sole remaining pawn shop. The exorbitant price sticker was still on the side.

"I told you not to buy from that shithole on 5th! Is that piece of crap even recording?"

Lieutena- _Reporter_  Katie Jensen shrugged dismissively and tapped the mic in an insistent manner.

"Oh its fine, now _come on_ Antoooooine, please! I'm begging you!"

"Would you just- gah, fuck." He turned in a movement familiar to Katie, even through his shiny new armour. All the fancy (symmetrical) shoulder pads and shin plates in the world couldn't disguise a glare from Antoine Bitters.

He straightened his gait and intensified what Katie was sure must be Chorus's Most Unamused Frown beneath that new orange visor.

"You're not gonna stop, are you?"

"Nope! This'll only take a minute! It might be fun to catch up!"

His shoulders stiffened in a way that could only mean increased Frownage.

"We 'caught up' last night. At the bar? Everyone was there? You asked me to do this? I said no?!"

Katie beamed winningly (in her modest opinion) and steamrolled ahead.

"That was me catching up with my old pal Antoine! Now, I'm catching up with _Captain Bitters_ , third-in-command of the New Chorus Defence Forces! I'm feeling so starstruck, getting an exclusive interview with such a decorated war hero."

The shoulders dropped slightly. This meant he was unimpressed.

(She'd had to learn armoured body language quickly in the New Republic.)

"Uh huh. You never did say who this was for."

Katie raised both eyebrows (in an attempt at a condescending single brow), and continued as if the answer couldn't be more obvious.

"Um, it's for the _New Armonian Gazette_? Obviously?"

 **Obviously**.

Bitters' shoulders dropped entirely. His hands went slack. His helmet tilted towards the ceiling. This, Katie knew from long experience, from perhaps the first day she met him, was the patented **Antoine-Bitters-Is-Done-With-Your-Nonsense Eye Roll**. TM.

"New Armoni- Jensen. I thought this was for an actual paper!"

Katie's jaw dropped and her head snapped back, reeling from this horrific betrayal.

"Excuse you, Captain! The NAG is the best-selling publication in the city!"

"Your one-man blog has sold three copies, _Lieutenant_. And I know for a fact Smith bought two of them."

"Wait, what?! John PROMISED he wouldn- ahem. Sir, I would prefer if interviewees addressed me as Ms. Jensen. I resigned my commision, as well you know!"

She hesitated, and smiled hopefully.

"...but, uh, you, _you_ can still call me Katie? Please?"

Bitters sighed again, the sound rasping through the speakers of his helmet, then he straightened his back, picked up his rifle from the bench next to him, and marched purposefully towards the door.

Jensen pursed her lips, then strode after him, shoes clacking against the steel floor.

"Captain, all I want is a brief excerpt from your time serving under General Doyle and I promise I'll lea-"

" _Jensen_. Katie. You're not as persuasive as you think you are. The doe eyes and the lisp never worked on me!"

Katie stopped from the sheer _bullshit_ of that last statement and opened her mouth to retort.

'I-"

" _I_ don't care! I am not talking about the war. I am not talking about Armonia, and I am definitely not gonna talk about Donald _fucking_ Doyle!"

He was almost through the door when she replied, quieter than he had ever heard her, quieter than after the Captains 'died', quieter than after Armonia, than after the Reds and Blues came back to Chorus's surface with a new suit, but bitterness and loss in their voices.

"OK, Captain...I'll just- you're right."

He stopped dead in his tracks. Not once, in the nearly five years Katie Jensen had been his friend, had she _agreed_ with him.

He turned to her slowly, shock evident in his movement.

"This was stupid of me. I mean," she let out a snort that sounded close to a sob, "what was I thinking? It's just some fluff piece, right? I mean, no one would _care_ anyway. It's just that- we would've lost.

Without him, I mean.”

"Like, we would've lost without a lot of things. The Reds and Blues, Kimball, the Swords. But, it's been a year. And, I see all these people talking about how great the colourful space marines are, and how ‘without Kimball's leadership at the crash site, Felix and Locus would've killed us all!’

And they're all _right_! The Reds and Blues ARE heroes! And Kimball pulled us up when we needed it most!

But, we wouldn't have had a chance if he didn't make that choice. To be the dead general. To be the dead hero."

I just- I just want people to think about him tomorrow. Y'know? Not just about the city we lost. Or the planet we saved. He deserves that. Right?"

A clunk of metal broke the dead silence that followed, then a long, melodramatic sigh. Katie smiled, wiped away a few pesky tears and sat next to Bitters's helmet on the bench, as Bitters narrowed his eyes and smiled ruefully at her.

"Grey can't ever take those braces off. You'd be unstoppable. Were you always this annoyingly persuasive? Or so friggin' eloquent?"

She grinned widely, and fought down the urge to tackle hug him. Armoured hugs always, ( _always_ ) left bruises.

"Nope! But I'm learning a lot from Kimball's speeches! And Doyle had some good ones too! But his deliveries were _really_ shaky and nervous...sincere, though!"

She paused and hummed in thought for a moment.

"Do you think generals have to take, like, a course? Before they're allowed t-"

"KATIE. I'm giving you five minutes. That's all. God, who else did you wrangle into this?"

She opened her mouth, shut it, then opened again.

"Uhhh...so far?"

"Oh, _Jesus_."

 

* * *

 

  **One Week Earlier**

 

As far as former soldiers go, Jensen mused, standing on the skeletal top 'floor' of New Armonia's soon-to-be City Hall, Smith had probably come the farthest from his old job out of anyone else she knew.

Though maybe not, she amended mentally.

How far a difference was there between managing a massive construction site and managing Captain Michael J Caboose, after all?

Fair is fair though, John had served his Captain with utmost respect (when not completely reverential), never failing to carry out any order, even the truly _implausible_ ones.

One day, Katie resolved, _one day_ she and Palomo would get Smith drunk enough to reveal just how he had managed to construct a functional catapult with so few materials.

Smith had always been the loyal sort though, even before Captain Caboose had become the teacher he'd always yearned for. His steadfast devotion to the New Republic was a long established staple of the Army long before Jensen had joined the fight, and he and Kimball had shown enough familiarity around each other for Katie to realise that he and the General had known each other long before Smith had started saluting when she walked into the room.

That reputation had earned Smith a lot of goodwill in the New Republic (and a few derisive detractors accusing him of brown nosing, but it never took long for those assholes to figure out the man was completely genuine), and when the war had finally ended, as he had so often assured Katie, or Palomo, or any of the younger troops that _it would_ , the man could probably have had any job he'd asked for.

But, when most of the former Armies of Chorus had wept at the chance to finally hang up their armour for good (Katie included), the first thing Smith had done was knock on Kimball's door and ask her what she  _needed_ him to do. 

Oh, Kimball had tried to turn him down, Spike had later told Katie privately (her position as PA to the President meant she saw a lot of things people would later call 'pivotal moments in our government's history!'), but John had refused, for the first time in living memory, to take no for an answer. 

This had led to what was apparently the first argument John Elizabeth Andersmith had engaged in for over a decade.

He had come prepared

"It was," Spike intoned to Jensen, half drunk and wide eyed from shock, " _fucking._   _Biblical_."

After a long, _loud_  'discussion', Smith emerged red-eyed, not the soldier he'd walked in asking to be, but as an architect.

The architect he'd once told _Private_ Vanessa Kimball that he studied to be.

Chief Architect (and Foreman) of the New Armonian City Hall at that. Everyone had to start somewhere.

Kimball called it the best tactical decision she'd ever made, and looking at the bare bones of the under construction building beneath her, Katie enthusiastically agreed.

The City Hall would be a shining beacon, an indicator of what the entire capital would look like eventually.

But that's not what she came here for, she reminded herself.

She readjusted the ill fitting hard hat that'd been thrust at her by a huge smiling man she recognised as Matthews's fiancee Adam, and went in search of her old friend.

It wasn't hard to find him. He was the one surrounded by a crowd of workers listening to his every (calm but authoritative) word.

"Alright," he said, critically inspecting a clipboard Adam handed him, eyes shifting through the long list of completed tasks, "good work, people! I think I can safely say we're _well_ ahead of our projected schedule."

This was immediately greeted with loud cheers and a few whistles, and he grinned widely before continuing.

"But, we're not gonna rest on our laurels just yet." He turned and regarded his men (and a fair few women Katie noted approvingly) with a serious look, which could only mean _one_ thing.

"My old Captain," he said solemnly, to a crowd of suddenly serious and attentive faces, "once told me something that'll stick with me until the day I die."

Katie _may_ have droned out a tad at this point, but was roused back to attention by the thunderous clapping of the entire crowd of builders, a few wiping tears away with the back of their hands.

Jensen hid a smile behind her notepad (she'd need to pick up an actual recorder soon, she resolved. Maybe that place on 5th had one?), and walked through the dispersing crowd of homebound workers to join her friend in enjoying the view of the sun setting over the unfinished skyline.

"Great speech," she greeted him with, "the Captains would be so _proud_!

He smiled bashfully in response and ducked his head.

"It was nothing, really," he said not a hint of bragging in his tone, "I just said what they deserved to hear."

They talked idly for a while, about the City Hall, the New Armonia Gazette, how Bitters was taking his new rank uncharacteristically seriously, before Smith sighed and set his jaw.

"Are you sure," he asked hesitantly, "that you want to include me in this thing?"

"Absolutely." Jensen replied quickly, with no such hesitation.

"Everyone knows you're the most honest man on Chorus. They'll want to hear what you have to say," and here she did pause for a second, "and, so do I."

Smith didn't respond for a few moments, looking straight ahead of him. Through the half built skyline, he could probably see the space cleared for his next project, Armonia's second medical centre.

He inhaled deeply, then turned to face Katie and gave her a small smile.

"General Doyle was, by a wide margin," he stopped and smiled for a second, "the _strangest_ soldier I've ever met."

 

"He was so anxious, and timid. I still have no idea how he stood in a room with the Reds and Blues without collapsing every time they started shouting, or just, talking for them, I guess. 

"I don't know how long he would've been able to lead the Feds if Locus hadn't been pulling the strings to keep him in charge, but, by all my crew's accounts he never tried to abdicate, or pass it down to the next guy in line. Who would that have been? Dr Grey?

Anyway, after he apparently fainted a few times, Adam told me he drank half the Army's tea supply, then started asking Locus for mission reports. It's better than a lot of people would do.

"Not that we knew any of that, obviously. Remember when Bitters used to try and scare Palomo by making up stories about the Devilman who led the Feds? We were all so convinced he'd be this seven foot tyrant, shooting fireballs from his visor and lightning from his ass.

"Then Felix gave away the game, we started sharing a barracks with people who'd been trying to kill us they day before, Doyle was walking around half terrified, like we were all waiting to pounce and kill him in broad daylight. He just seemed so...ordinary. Unmemorable. After all that hype.

"But, I do remember. I remember the one time we talked, about 12 hours before he died.

It was late, really late, and I was on guard duty, in the rain, dead on my feet. I hadn't slept in, God, two days? We had just gotten back from that shit storm at Crash Site Alpha, he was carrying around the Sword, constantly surrounded by Feds.

Anyway, I was about ready to fall over, and then Doyle comes around the corner, two bodyguards with him, both giving me the stink eye, and he stops. Looks at me like I had said something, asks if I'm OK.

Aaannnnd, then I passed out.

I woke up about half an hour later, leant against the door I was meant to be guarding. I don't even know what was inside, I was so beat.

And he's crouched down next to me, _begging_ me not to die because he was terrified Kimball might finally snap and murder him if he'd accidentally killed one of her men.

Katie. Stop laughing. This is serious. So, after I'd asked him if he was OK, seriously, _stop_ giggling or I'm gonna start too, he pulls out a thermos of this ridiculously strong,  _awful_ tea, and watches to make sure I drink it.

He asks when I last slept, goes Fed-armour White when I tell him, then orders me to go to the barracks and sleep. I started to say no, then he just kept talking over me, tells one of his guards to take my place, makes me drink more tea, then asks me, "why the Devil haven't you rested yet?!" 

I said, I was covering Palomo's shift 'cos he was too tired to stand up, so it was my duty to help my fellow soldiers when they needed me. Then I passed out. Again.

Guess one of his men must have carried me, cos I woke up in my bunk at the barracks the next morning. Then Charon showed up, and then there were no barracks to go back to that night, and there was no Doyle to thank for...anything.

I think about that a lot. Was he thinking of what I said? At the reactor? Did that have anything to do with it? Did if make him feel better? Or worse?

"I don't know Katie. But even on the good days? It keeps me up at night."

Katie sniffled, and he gave her a handkerchief to dry her eyes with, because _of course_ John Elizabeth Andersmith carried around clean hankies, of course.

John smiled again, wider than before, maybe a little sadder but still completely genuine, and gestured at New Armonia.

"But, for what it's worth? I think he was thinking about _this_ too."

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
